by V. K. Ludwig
“You play with the children every day. Don’t you want your own?” He kicked his legs into his pants, the bulging head of his erection poking out from underneath leather straps. “Most males in this galaxy can’t produce offspring with human females. Klaxians count among them.”
“What I want rarely matters.” Ada stood, tense and confused. “Everyone just pushes and pulls me around.” And he was no exception. She’d do well to remember it.
Eight
“How can she possibly consider Gral as her future mate?” Something pricked Kerien’s organs at the thought as he stared over the agridome. “That Klaxian will only corrupt her.”
Thuran pinched the bridge of his nose. “Didn’t you say she was corrupted already?”
“I was mistaken.” That confession came with an irregular beat of his heart. “How could that coward of a male let me steal her away so easily? If she was my mate, I would rip the heart out of everyone who tried to take her from me, and wage war to get her back if they succeeded.”
“By Drana, I dare say you’ve taken a liking to this woman.” Thuran lifted a brow, then made certain Kerien saw it by leaning into him. “I advise you against it, my Varac. She has her own agenda. But don’t hesitate to turn her into your puppet. She’s naive enough.”
But less and less so. “That woman is smarter than the two of us combined, with a keen sense of observation. Once she realizes just how capable she is, she will be a force to be reckoned with.”
Each day, she worked the fields as hard as any Aurani, even though her questions had long run dry. The way she applied herself on Aura Station deserved his respect, but it was her good nature which had earned her his admiration.
“She’s come into heat,” he said.
Thuran smacked his tongue. “I noticed.”
Kerien’s fists clenched as if he wanted to punch his juketar for doing so. “Do human females always smell this strong?”
“I find it rather subtle. And it’s already fading.”
“I find it rather… strong.” Pray to Drana his attraction to her would fade along with her heat.
Thuran wrapped his hands around his horns and threw his head back. “She’s been with us for almost two weeks now. What if Gral refuses to negotiate? She’ll have to remain on Aura Station, or we’ll risk embarrassment upon her return.”
Where Kerien’s stomach should have convulsed to the point of sickening, it held an unforgivable tingle instead. For someone at the brink of losing his life and dooming his people and her to lose theirs right along with him, the idea of keeping her excited him beyond forgiveness. Just like her touch had excited him in ways nothing short of concerning.
He’d grown hard when she’d explored his horns, her heat inviting him to mount her and fill her womb with seed. And the way she’d stroked the sensitive base of his horns...
If he hadn’t brought up Gral, no doubt he would have pulled her into the water, rutting her like that beast humans made him out to be. He’d dug his claws into the dirt for control. Why did he react so strongly to her?
As a Varac, it was easy for him to seek out the pleasure of mating, although he usually tried to abstain. No need to complicate things with the longing to touch the very woman he’d captured. The woman who grew more and more beautiful with each word spoken between them.
“Perhaps an ultimatum is in order,” he said, the empty threat spreading bitter across his tongue. How would he back up such a final warning? With her blood? A torn digit? An ear?
He gave an internal scoff, that growing obsession with the heiress eating away on his insides. How her father could have produced something seemingly void of deceit was beyond him; how Kerien could possibly harm her even more so.
Thuran loosened the grip on his horns and wiped his palms over his face. “We could keep her until she turns twenty-one and influence her into supplying us with a core.”
As if he hadn’t considered it already — for the wrong reasons. Core? What core? Keeping the heiress presented an opportunity of getting to know her better. Preferably when her heat didn’t cloud his judgment.
He ran his claws over his scalp as if that idea could be dissected out of his head. “The core will not last that long. I had to lower the temperature in the agridome already, and yet the system threatens a temporary shutdown.”
“What is she doing now?”
Kerien watched the heiress push through high stalks, slippers dangling from her hand, head ducked as if the children wouldn’t catch her scent that way.
“Playing hide and seek with your daughter and the other ureshi,” he said, the warmth feathering across his chest a reminder of how he longed for family. A mate. A child. “At least she stopped getting stuck in trees.”
“She is very open-minded and unafraid of our kind,” he said. “You could give her to one of your warriors as mate.”
“Hmm.” Kerien turned silent for long moments, hiding balled hands as his arms crossed behind his back. Any warrior approaching her wouldn’t survive it. “Contact every planet we’ve traded with in the last decade. Ask them for asylum. Tell them I will go on my knees and beg if that is —”
A low hum mumbled through the air.
One light after another faded into darkness, leaving the agridome pitch black. Terror spread across his body and permeated his skin, from where it dug into his bones and festered at the marrow.
The system was shutting down.
Vision impaired, Kerien’s ears pricked at the gasps coming from his people, their voices laced with panic. Emergency lights turned on overhead, casting a red hue across the chamber where scared children clasped to their mother’s calves.
“Get the engineers to the powerplant,” he ordered. “Have them supercharge the core until —” Kerien flinched at the scent of crisp moisture and ozone creeping into his nostrils. “Do you smell that?”
Thuran flared his nostrils repeatedly, but only shook his head. “Smell what?”
“Coldness.” Kerien closed his eyes and paid close attention to the gentle prickling across his shoulders, but he couldn’t be certain. “Did the ambience rod fail?”
“I will run a report on the interior temperature.”
Kerien let his eyes search for the heiress.
She stood huddled together with the others in her group. Then she did it. Wrapping herself in a hug, she brushed her palms up and down her arms in need of warmth.
All strength sucked from his limbs, he let his next order shatter through the dome. “Cover the plants!”
“Fuck,” Thuran mumbled underneath his breath before his voice turned into a shout. “All engineers to the ambience rod!”
Liquid adrenaline pumped into Kerien’s veins. The engineers would restart the ships heating system and keep them from freezing to death within hours as the bitter cold of the universe crept through the metal shell. But what about the plants?
“Get all the covers we have,” he barked and hurried down the stairs, sprinting over to one of the sheds. “Protect the clumpleaf and dagar roots first. Towels, breeches, furs… gather whatever you can find and save the harvest.”
Mumbles and wails rushed through the dome like the slicing breeze of an oncoming storm. One who would leave them starved long before the core failed one final time.
Knuckles stiff, he pulled one folded thermo cover after another from the shed and threw it behind him into the dirt. Females and children picked them up and unfolded them, the crrk of frantic claws accidentally tearing the fabric torturing his ears.
“Let me do it!”
Kerien turned at the sound of the heiress’ voice, and what he saw squeezed his chest to a point his next inhale stalled. What was this frail, shivering creature doing, unfolding one cover after another with fingers too soft to harm even fabric?
He grabbed the remaining covers and handed them out to whoever took them off his arms, then hurried over to her.
“What are you doing, woman?” He clasped her shoulders, claws splayed away from her skin, a
nd turned her to him. “Go to your chamber and put on whatever clothing you can find, then go underneath the furs until I send for you.”
“And let the plants die? Fuck no.” Even as her small body sat clamped tightly between his hands, she fumbled with the blankets, unfolding them without sparing him a glance. “I’ll leave once I get too cold, but not before then.”
“Stubborn woman,” he hissed.
Caring woman.
Another squeeze around his chest.
Could-never-be-his woman.
Kerien tried not to let that truth affect him and released her, grabbing a stack of covers before he jumped up onto a terrace.
Taking a calming breath, he forced his stiff muscles to ease, carefully unfolding the thermo blanket without causing rips or holes. He draped it around the clumpleaf bush, protecting the roots from frost before he tugged the fabric halfway up the plant.
“Here.” The heiress tossed him a blanket already unfolded, then draped hers around yet another bush. “Those sh-shr-shrubs over there a s-still carrying pul… pulses.”
“That’s it.” He rose and pulled her onto her feet, her skin already so cold it sucked all warmth from his palms. “Go to your chamber. You’re of no use to me dying of hypothermia.”
Teeth chattering, goosebumps casting a purple shadow across her arms, she finally nodded and walked away, her steps ransacked by shivers.
At the next higher terrace, Mariad and another female clasped the corner of a large blanket in one hand each and pulled it across stalks of flaskwheat.
“Not the grains!” When his shout all but drowned in the chaos of thin voices and prayers to the goddess, he sprinted over to the edge of the field and jumped onto the next terrace. “The grains aren’t worth saving. Cut the blanket and drape the pulses like I ordered.”
Even Mariad, a female who had seen suffering beyond words, stared back at him wide-eyed, confirming just how bad this was. “Yes, my Varac.”
By the time all blankets were used up, the tips of many plants turned stiff underneath the settling frost. Leaves wilted and shriveled within minutes, curling into themselves before they surrendered to the cold.
Thuran ran up to him, his hard breath sending billows of vapor into the air. “The engineers overrode the settings on the ambience rod and crossfired it with the emergency system.”
“How long until the temperature stabilizes?”
His juketar lifted his hands, lips parting and closing. “Ten hours? Twenty?”
“The plants won’t survive that long.” And his people only slightly longer. “Let the children collect dried hessa dung. Burn it at the corners of each field.”
“Varac!” one of the guards shouted. “The heiress. The woman.”
Kerien swung around. “The woman what?”
“She collapsed, my Varac.” He pointed behind him toward a group of females, some of them kneeling, some throwing their hands up in prayer. “By the tool shed.”
“Tool shed,” Kerien snarled, his stomps cracking the soil which had long gone frozen underfoot. “I said chamber. Not tool shed.”
His horns once more heated as he pushed himself a path through the crowd, anger pulsing through his veins. He wanted to scream at her for her foolishness.
Until his stomps died to a halt, and the rush of blood right along with it. The heiress leaned against the shed, females and children madly rubbing her arms. Her body had gone so cold she was entirely still, even the shivers had abandoned her.
“Make room!” Kerien picked her up and draped her over his arms, pressing her listless body close against his. “Get the furs from my bed and bring them to my old chamber. Heat water and add treeblood to it.”
Not wasting another second, Kerien fell into a jog and carried her up the stairs, his heart pounding not from exhaustion but fear of her falling ill. He needed to warm her up. Now.
He kicked the door to his old chamber open and lowered her onto the bed. Next, he slipped out of his boots and positioned himself next to her at the center of the bed.
A deep breath.
Then another.
What he was about to do would complicate things on so many levels. Not for the fact that she was promised to another male, but for how his heart gave one massive whomp against his ribcage the moment he pulled her body against his.
It felt right.
It felt… as if Drana wanted her in his arms.
He sensed his protectiveness over her rise within him. Perhaps it had even been there before.
Kerien positioned her head to rest on his arm, her torso sitting flush against his, and draped his leg over hers. Whichever fur was in reach he pulled across their bodies, sharing as much of his heat with her as she needed. She could have it all.
Hand turned, he stroked the back of his claws over her cheeks, a soft sheen of moisture covering her skin. “Ada.”
He spread the taste of her name across his gums. A delicacy he’d never allowed himself to sample, so sweet on his tongue he wanted to make a mantra of it.
“Varac,” Mariad’s voice came from behind his shoulder. “I warmed these linens. May I wrap them around her feet?”
“Go ahead. What about the hot water?”
“Right here.” The old female let a mug clink against the small table beside the bed, then rummaged through the furs, heat soon permeating the area around their feet. “I brought more furs and will leave them here at the edge. Is she shivering?”
Kerien held his breath, taking in the slightest vibrations of her body. “Very slowly, yes.”
“Then she will recover,” Mariad said. “Varvek told me she stopped on her way to your chamber because he couldn’t find his mother. He was crying, and she picked him up and helped him search for her in the turmoil.”
Kerien swallowed his sigh and stared at Ada’s chapped lips, sensing his heart beat for this woman. Of course she couldn’t just be foolish and disregard his order.
No. On top of her honesty, generosity, and caring nature, she had to be kind as well, which wasn’t helping his emotional strength. Neither did the realization that her heat was indeed fading, yet the way he felt drawn to her was not.
When Mariad’s steps had silenced away behind him, he stroked his claws through lustrous hair. “Wake up, Ada.”
“Mmh.”
His core heated at her moan, tempting him to groan in response. He trailed his face over the side of her neck, lips brushing her warming skin. If she woke now, would she scream? Ada was beautiful, her skin not marked by the cruelties of life. And while Kerien was strong and virile, he wasn’t handsome. Not among Aurani, and certainly not humans.
The more she shivered, the tighter he held her against him, until green eyes blinked open, the way they locked with his robbing Kerien of his breath. Had that little speck of gold always sat there at the bottom of her right iris? Or was it Drana?
She slurred something, the only comprehensible part rising in pitch at the end. “… Varvek?”
“He’s with his mother.” Because she’d been selfless enough to look after an Aurani child rather than herself.
“Are we going to lose a lot of our harvest?”
We? Our?
A sense of devotion overcame him, as irrational as it was inappropriate. There were a million reasons why there could neither be we nor our, starting with the fact that he had to return her in exchange for a power core.
“Don’t worry about the harvest for now.”
Another moan followed by the cold tip of her nose rubbing across his chest as her eyes closed once more. Ada wiggled her arms and brought them in front of her chest, the three claw marks already covered by scabs.
“You’re beautiful, Ada,” he rasped.
“Mmh…” she moaned. “It’s a curse.”
He’d meant on the inside…
Nine
Black. Long. Convex.
The same claws that had punctured Ada’s skin almost two weeks ago, now rested against her sternum. The Varac held his arm draped over her
waist, his hard body pressing against her backside.
An intense heat rested between them, cradling her in a sense of safety, though she ached as if she’d been tossed out of a drone during flight. How did she end up with his body coiled around her?
Stiff and coarse, the edge of a fur tickled her earlobe, the weight of many hides pressing her into the mattress. The last thing she remembered was Varvek’s tears running down his cheeks, landing on her freezing skin like drops of acid. And then… nothing.
Perhaps she’d gotten too cold and passed out? That had to be it. What else would justify waking up in the Varac’s embrace? Absolutely fucking nothing.
If she managed to sneak away, she would save herself and him the embarrassment of waking in each other’s arms like lovers. They could never be that. Or perhaps they could, once or twice, or… until he returned her.
One inch at a time, she wiggled her hips, paddled her legs, and slowly scooted away from him. His arm brushed over her waist. He moved slightly behind her. And then —
“What is it?” His voice disabled her movement, her heart, and her organs all at once. “Are you unwell? A fever, perhaps?”
Not nearly as unwell as she was embarrassed. “I… I had no idea you were awake.”
“I’ve been awake for hours,” he rasped. “I remained as still as I could as not to rouse you. You need rest.”
Ada tortured her upper lip, her core only slowly thawing from numbness. If she turned around now, what kind of look would she find on his face? Her throat turned dry. What kind of look would he find on hers?
One tug on her shoulder, and the Varac rolled her onto her back, his eyes so narrowed he almost appeared tortured again. “You risked your life yesterday to help us save our harvest. Why?”
“Because…” She paused for a moment, just now realizing how tired he looked. He couldn’t have gotten a lot of sleep. “I like your people, and Aura Station almost feels like a home to me. How could I not help?”
And how ridiculous was that? Sad, really. A telltale of how empty her life was back home. A life she would have to go back to. Especially now that the Aurani surely lost some of their harvest. She would return to chef-prepared meals. They would hunger. That stung deep.